Climber

Climber is the Tower’s distinctive adventurer status and progression path, linking personal class development to exploration, danger, and territorial power. To become a Climber is to move beyond merely possessing a Class: the aspirant must survive a Class Trial, acquire abilities and relics, gain levels, and continue ascending through increasingly hostile floors. The status promises freedom and wealth, but it also exposes its holders to monsters, rival parties, unstable terrain, factional suspicion, and a system that assigns roles and regulates advancement.

Definition and Entry

A Climber is not simply someone who travels upward. The status is presented as a transformation in what a person can do within the Tower. William Oh imagines that the abilities granted through the Uru Drake Sacrifice will let him acquire Relics, become a Climber, establish a large range on an upper floor, and eventually become a Lord. In that ambition, Climbing is the bridge between a poor aspirant’s immediate survival and political authority over land and resources.

Access to the path is unequal from the beginning. Some people spend days or weeks traveling from the outskirts of civilization to earn their Classes, while those living in the frigid wastes may need months. William Oh is comparatively fortunate: Saint Gertrude’s Orphanage is only an hour’s walk from town, although he still needs supplies before attempting the process. His preparation is practical rather than ceremonial, consisting of a sling, two dozen bullets, pemmican, and a waterskin. The contrast establishes a recurring fact about Climbers: advancement may be governed by extraordinary magic, but entry still depends on food, equipment, distance, and bodily endurance.

The first sacrifice also demonstrates that the system does not reward effort automatically. When William Oh places a thumb-sized piece of pemmican on a Class Trial Altar, a beam of light consumes it, but the System identifies the offering as suboptimal and fails to generate a Class Seed. The failed attempt makes Climbing materially costly before it becomes heroic. Sacrifice, judgment, and uncertainty stand between an aspirant and the identity of Climber.

The Trial and Systemic Advancement

The Class Trial defines the Climber as a survivor who must solve a concrete environmental and military problem. William Oh’s trial places him in a canyon of sheer cliffs, jagged crags, narrow footholds, and vegetation-dominated patches of level ground. The portal back to the Hunting Grounds is guarded by a tribe of Maksu led by Sezz’kenal, a caravan raider who has acquired a taste for human flesh. Returning through the portal qualifies the candidate to join The Climb, so the trial tests more than combat strength: it demands movement, route-finding, improvisation, and escape under pressure.

Completion grants a cluster of institutional privileges. After finishing the trial, William Oh is assigned Scout and Infiltrator roles through Quest Assignment, with the option to dispute the assignment only by undertaking another trial at the Kiosk on Floor 5. The System also allows him to travel freely between floors at Key Locations, receive Quests, form Parties, and petition to subjugate land. These permissions reveal that Climber status is simultaneously a reward and an administrative classification. The System opens routes and opportunities while sorting the newly recognized Climber into roles that shape how others will use him.

The progression structure continues through levels, abilities, charges, and quests. The System asks William Oh to choose his Primary Abilities, and he studies the meaning of the Resourceful Climber class before selecting them because he wants to understand how the class context may determine future development. Later, after fighting bandits and reaching level ten in Oilton, he receives the option to select a Secondary Ability and another Primary Ability upgrade slot. He considers a direct-damage ability after witnessing Loth’s devastating attack, then rejects the impulsive choice because it belongs to a build suited to Loth rather than to himself. Climbing therefore rewards not only accumulation but build discipline: power is useful only when it fits the role a Climber is constructing.

Quests, Routes, and Material Survival

Climbers operate through a system of escalating assignments. William Oh receives the Establishing Quest: Break the Supply Lines after the Kaith push into the First Floor and come under an extermination order for higher-level Climbers. Although the primary Kaith nest is under siege, supplies continue to reach it through unknown channels. The quest turns exploration into organized intervention, requiring the party to locate and sever a hidden network rather than simply defeat visible enemies.

The work is collaborative and materially specific. William Oh and Loth split into groups to scout branching caves in search of the Kaith supply line. Loth carries a bucket-sized barrel of soil topped with food scraps that houses dozens of insect species, all of which he controls with ease. He also marks every cave branch with arrows made from the luminescent juices of crushed glowbugs. When William Oh is nearly thrown into an abyss after landing hard on a ledge, Loth’s rope reaches him from the darkness and gives him a way to secure himself. These details redefine the Climber’s toolkit: insects, improvised markers, ropes, and terrain knowledge can matter as much as weapons.

The second-floor ascent makes the economics of advancement explicit. After William Oh reaches level five on his first Establishing Quest, the System ranks his performance 1,053rd among that year’s Aspirants and reduces experience gain in the Hunting Grounds and the First Floor. Continued power accumulation now requires ascent to the Second Floor, creating pressure through a level-based progression ceiling. The next quest is therefore not optional in any practical sense: to keep growing, the Climber must move upward.

The rules also create exploitable shortcuts. The fastest route to the next floor is to follow a bus and help clear its Key Site. A Climber need only be present and avoid actively sabotaging the other participants to receive passage. William Oh and Loth watch such a bus depart southward, but they are still acclimating and decide that following it would be foolish while below the current floor’s maximum level. The episode captures the tension between speed and preparation. Climbing rewards initiative, yet the same rules invite dangerous opportunism; survival depends on knowing when a loophole is worth using.

Parties, Conflict, and Social Boundaries

Although Climbers share a broad professional identity, they do not form a uniformly egalitarian community. Near the Stronghold, William Oh and Loth pass other Climbers who nod while keeping a hand lightly on the pommel of a weapon. Their cautious courtesy is paired with prolonged looks at Loth, and Loth observes that Climber camaraderie does not cross the barrier of species. William Oh answers that the fact no one kills Loth on sight counts as a form of progress, but the exchange leaves the boundary intact: cooperation exists alongside suspicion, and shared status does not erase racial or species prejudice.

Parties provide the practical structure for overcoming that distrust. William Oh and Loth travel together through unstable bridges, hostile territory, and temperature extremes. The roc-feather cloak keeps Loth warm during a frost-tinged morning and shields him from the sun’s later heat, while William Oh remains unaffected by temperature extremes and teases him about the contrast. Their movement eastward to meet other grinders places them within the wider Climber economy of leveling, temporary cooperation, and information exchange.

The social reputation attached to Climbing can become almost mythic. In a fourth-floor stilt-bar, Thug McBandit describes William Oh as fighting alone with astonishing viciousness. The account is exaggerated in tone, but its important fact is isolation: William Oh’s reputation is built not only on belonging to a Party but on the spectacle of one Climber surviving and fighting by himself. The image contrasts with the actual dependence visible elsewhere in his story, where ropes, allies, potions, transport systems, and specialized abilities repeatedly determine whether a Climber lives.

Risks, Consequences, and Significance

Climber status remains inseparable from injury. After a dangerous encounter, William Oh drops exhausted into the ash while carrying Brianna, and later awakens to find Loth sleeping beside him with large patches of his scales burned away. Despite having entered only one actual fight, both have been badly damaged. William Oh is nevertheless recognized as a level 11 Resourceful Climber. The title converts survival into measurable advancement, but the juxtaposition is deliberately harsh: the system records a level while bodies record burns, exhaustion, and the cost of reaching it.

The role also demands continuous strategic judgment. William Oh’s gear temporarily appears to be missing, creating the fear that someone has taken it, but he finds it against the wall; only his amulet and rings remain with him. The incident reinforces how exposed a Climber is even after returning to apparent safety. Equipment is not background property but part of the status’s operational identity, and its loss could undo the advantages gained through levels and abilities.

At the larger scale, Climbers are the mechanism by which the Tower’s geography becomes political. Their trials open movement between floors; their quests expose supply lines; their parties clear Key Sites; their levels determine where experience remains productive; and their petitions can lead to the subjugation of land. The path from a failed pemmican sacrifice to a level 11 Resourceful Climber is therefore not merely a power fantasy. It is a system of selection and governance that distributes mobility, violence, knowledge, and territory. Climbers rise through the Tower, but in doing so they also reproduce its rules, exploit its permissions, and decide who is allowed to share the ascent.